Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to a method, apparatus and system for image processing.
Description of the Related Art
The “background” description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in the background section, as well as aspects of the description which may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly or impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
It is currently possible to produce zoomed-in images of a scene using a large, high resolution image and a virtual camera. In such a system, the only real image which is captured is the large, high resolution image. Zoomed-in images are created entirely electronically by selecting a portion (also known as a cut out) of the large, high resolution image and displaying this portion. For example, a high definition (HD) cut out can be obtained from a 4 k or 8 k image. The shape of the cut-out can be changed so as to change the perspective of the resulting zoomed-in image that is displayed. This allows the electronically-produced zoomed-in image to have the characteristics of an image which has been captured by a real camera which is panned across a scene. A method of producing such perspective corrected zoomed-in images is disclosed in GB 1306050.4 the contents of which is hereby incorporated by reference, which may be referred to as Reference 1.
The problem with these electronically produced zoomed-in images, however, is that, since a real camera is not actually used to produce the image, it is difficult to use television illustrator (also known as telestrator) systems with the zoomed-in image. Telestrator systems are used for producing computer generated images on top of real life video images (for example, marking a player's offside position on a soccer pitch) and traditionally rely on mapping features in a real three-dimensional (3D) scene to features in a two-dimensional (2D) image of the scene captured by a real camera. This allows the telestrator to determine the correct position of a computer generated image, the computer generated image being based on a feature in the real 3D scene, within a captured video image frame. It is an object of the present disclosure to alleviate this problem.